I have a large drive that I use for mass storage for things like media, projects, downloaded files, etc. I have it formatted as NTFS so that I can mount it in Windows and Linux, allowing me to use those files no matter which OS I’m in. I went to create a new directory on that drive, but the command came back with “Read-only Filesystem”. I tried re-mounting it and got this crap:
The disk contains an unclean file system (0, 0).
Metadata kept in Windows cache, refused to mount.
Falling back to read-only mount because the NTFS partition is in an unsafe state. Please resume and shutdown Windows fully (no hibernation or fast restarting.)
Turns out, the last time I was in Windows, it decided to suspend/hibernate the disk when I shut it down, rather than cleaning up its mess on the non-system drive like a good operating system does. Once again, Windows assumes it’s the only operating system in existence.
Now, this issue is easily fixed, and last I heard there is a way to disable this behavior. But it’s buried deep in an obscure interface, or probably reduced to a registry hack by now. Further, I had already disabled that behavior, so it would seem that an update re-enabled it without consulting me. It’s exactly this “death by a thousand cuts” kind of thing that keeps pushing me closer and closer to forsaking my games and erasing Windows from my life entirely.
For now, I’ll just copy the needed directory to my home directory and work on it there until I decide Windows’ fate. If I do obliterate Windows, I’ll probably back up my mass drive, reformat it to EXT4 or ZFS, then perhaps even use it as /home. The tricky part is going to be getting that much data backed up. I’m not sure that all the other drives in my machine combined would be enough space. If I really have to, I suppose I could rsync it to my server, but that would take a long time, given how slow up-links are for residential connections in the US. Pulling it back would also take just as long, since the server is also on a residential connection.